Last year, CineLink Industry Days, the industry strand of the Sarajevo Film Festival transitioned from the iconic 140-year-old Hotel Europe to the Marijin Dvor neighborhood of the city. Events were held at the more modern Swissôtel and a Festival Garden was constructed outside the hotel as a hub for events. In many ways, it seemed a symbolic move, falling in line with CineLink’s continued push to offer up newer strands to its growing program.
It launched CineLink Books last year in response to the growing demand for IP and interest from regional and international professionals in adaptations. This year, it will explore the gaming world with its new strand Talents Innovation Program.
“We know we are on a good path by bringing these different industries together,” says Maša Marković, Head of Industry at the Sarajevo Film Festival. “The film industry, especially in our region, needs to be able to adapt to different forms of content and explore different synergies and collaborations from different sectors.”
Last year its CineLink Books strand saw selected novels from the region of former Yugoslavia pitched to international and regional producers. “Last year was the first edition and we were very happy with it, and we had some great outcomes,” says Marković. “We have one book that was acquired for adaptation, and the second one is in negotiation. So it was a really good outcome for us. This strand was the result of two years of work, and we put publishers, established producers, novelists and screenwriters together in forum sessions to understand the potential synergies between the industries.”
This year will see the launch of Talents Innovation Forum, a three-day strand within the program that is designed to give both emerging talent and seasoned professionals a clearer view of the overlap between cinema, animation and video-game development. “What we want to do is bring together some of the gaming industry closer to the film industry,” says Marković. “I think, especially for the region, none of the industries have the luxury to ignore the other one.”
She continues: “We are talking about a great number of the same people that will end up on one side or the other and we need a better skill education for them so they can transition easily and return. This is the new reality we are facing, and we know that we want to open the minds of emerging filmmakers and give them the opportunity to see what skills they can actually enhance.”
Serbian video game studio Mad Head Games is set to attend the event this year to discuss its new Hellraiser adaptation. “They will talk about the whole franchise and what the experience has been like working with this IP,” she says.
“We are trying to find interesting points of where the industry is actually moving towards,” she says, adding that this new strand will go “hand in hand” with its Producers Lab “because we believe that producers who are in the early stages of their career need now a much broader spectrum of skills than ever.”
The program will continue to feature its usual strands such as CineLink Talks, CineLink Co-Production Market and its CineLink Works in Progress sections.
There’s also the CineLink Drama strand, a co-financing forum presenting high-end drama series from Southeast Europe, and its documentary strands Docu Rough Cut Boutique and Docu Talents from the East. Its Producers’ Lab features training activities aimed at fostering personal and professional development for film professionals across Southeast Europe while its Talents Sarajevo Pack and Pitch showcases the freshest talent to international professionals.
Earlier this year, it was announced that the festival’s Heart of Sarajevo Awards for TV series will no longer be held during the festival and will instead fold into the Adriatic Film and TV Awards, a new event which will launch in Montenegro in October. The event is founded by the Sarajevo Film Festival, Zagreb Film Festival and Belgrade’s Auteur Film Festival.
Marković notes that it’s an exciting move. “With the TV series awards, it was a really lovely celebration of this craft side, but we wanted to give a much larger spotlight to the creatives. The new established Adriatic Film and TV awards will encompass both fiction films, documentaries and TV series. It will really be a celebration of the talent from films and series and give them the spotlight they deserve.”
She continues: “When we started CineDrama in our industry section in 2016, people were very sceptical about the decision that we were starting to focus on development of drama series in the region because there was no financing for series at the time. But we knew that the money would come eventually and that the people who would be working on the drama series would need to be skilled up and ready to jump onto the train when it came.”
“Our idea was to offer training and connection and understanding of the drama market and those established producers, directors and script writers to understand the shift.”
CineLinks Industry Days runs August 16-21, 2025.
The post Books, Gaming & TV Series: How Sarajevo Film Festival’s Industry Strand Is Adapting To The Ever-Changing Content Business appeared first on Deadline.
